I currently have a water cooler setup with an external passive radiator. It has no fans (which is great!) and has dropped about 5-10C off my CPU temp.

My only problem is, the room where the system operates still gets very warm (upto 30-35C), and the radiator is only effective at bringing the coolant down to ambient temps.

Is there any way I can improve my system to go below ambient ?

Would a combination of Peltier & Water Cooling work ?

For example, if the peltier worked outside the system case, this would avoid adding more heat into the CPU environment, and if I constructed a controller to only activate Peltier when ambient temp. was too high it might be reasonably efficient. What do you think ?

At this stage, I only have a rough handle on the concepts of Peltier, I'm going to have to re-read the article MANY more times before I start to understand the mathematics.

Replies:

By: Edward (IP: 24.5.93.*)Written on: 29-09-2006 02:16

I am not an expert, but it seems that if you bring the temperature down too far below ambient you may cause condensed water to form on the delivery surfaces, inside the computer.

Just a thought. There may be insulators with absorbtion available.

Edward

By: Ray (IP: 81.79.213.*)Written on: 30-09-2006 00:23

Simplest, cheapest solution is to put a quiet (120mm) fan into the mix. I'd go for one with a built-in 3-step speed controller so that you can vary the speed based on performance required. I read somewhere that a fan can take 5C off the ambient air temperature. And that these big quiet quiet fans are inaudible above the noise of existing components e.g., hard drives etc.

HTH, Ray

By: Ray (IP: 81.79.213.*)Written on: 30-09-2006 00:25

Oh ... and although I've not tried it myself, I hear that the additive called "Water Wetter" can help in water-cooled systems.